I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Slashdot is a community made up of thousands of people. I doubt there is any subject, including whether or not slashdot sucks, that the community has a consensus on.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
I'm not aware of that at all. Considering they do not handle any copyrighted information and no copyrighted information flows through any servers they control, i'd say it's a pretty big stretch to say they are running a major piracy ring.
That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
They provided text files that told people where people were providing files to download. Some of those people were providing copyrighted content. Telling someone that someone else is selling or giving away content is not illegal, at least not where i am. Nor should it be illegal in my opinion.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Because he's busy building space ships? Have you had specific conversations with Mr. Carmack about his posting habits or are you just making shit up? My suspicion is that you are making shit up.
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
Again, Slashdot, as a community, doesn't really have a consensus about anything, including if Microsoft is evil and if the GPL is a good thing. Also, if the goal is to drive up page views, the best way to do that is to post articles that are at odds with the consensus as that will cause flame wars. Nothing generates page views and comments like a contrarian point of view stated as if it were a fact.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
Do you have a citation for this? I do not recall that ever happening, which is not to say it didn't, but that i don't know what you are talking about.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
In some slashdotters that apparent dichotomy does exist. I would guess it has to do with intent. People who favour the GPL see it as an important tool for protecting the freedoms of the users of software. Some of these people probably also view the behaviour of the record and movie industries as an abuse of the users of their products and consider the nullification of their copyrights as an appropriate punishment for their actions.
Of course some people also just want stuff for free.
But to try to make sweeping conclusions about the thousands of people who read slashdot based on the one or two hundred people who post on these stories is not in any way valid.
For my part, i am on the side of the pirate bay because i don't think they've done anything illegal. The police and copyright holders should be going after the people seeding the files, not the people saying "those guys are seeding files". If getting the seeders is too technically hard for them, that's too bad. They shouldn't get to go after innocent people just because it's easier.
I think that perhaps everyone has skeletons in their closet, because the perception of appropriateness in society is a fabrication of an ideal that not only doesn't exist, but that nobody really wants to exist.
The deliciousness of the skeletons in the closets of people like Mr. Yee comes from the perception that they are the instigators and promoters of the fabrication that we all quietly disagree with. The exposure of their hypocrisy is enjoyable in a very schadenfreudian way.
In my opinion, they are largely just catering to the societal fraud of morality to get elected and stay elected. In that respect the hypocrisy is ours as members of society as much is it is his for catering to it, probably moreso.
I try to avoid this by not telling other people what they can and cannot do, within the limits of causing indisputable harm to one another (and i'm fine with that if it's consentual).
It is still satisfying and entertaining to see snake oil salesmen exposed as charlatans, though.
MySQL would be a bad example with which to try to assert your point. MySQL AB did not lose control of MySQL because they open sourced their main product. They were a very profitable company that grew large enough to be sought after for acquisition by major international corporations because they open sourced their main product.
They lost control of it because they sold control to Sun. Sun is losing control not because people are unhappy that Sun owns MySQL now, but because Sun is not providing their customers with what they want.
Part of the problem is that MySQL is not the main product of Sun so it gets less attention and resources than its customers require.
So when it was the main product of the controlling company, it was profitable and successful. Now that it is just one element of a portfolio of products of a company, it is languishing and its customer base is talking about forking it. That doesn't support your premise at all.
Open source removes the ability for the company to use lock-in to control their customers. It forces the company to provide what their customers want and manage the perception that their involvement is valuable.
This is not intended as a flame. I just disagree with your assertion in general and your example specifically and am trying to articulate intelligently why i think you are incorrect.
Strippers or any other woman in the sex industry basically thinks men are "suckers" and "losers". All women in the sex industry are head cases. Stay away from them.
i have a very good friend who is a stripper. She is not a head case and does not think negatively about men in general. Though she does think poorly of some men, it is for reasons specific to the individuals. Through her, i have met a few other strippers who were also charming and friendly people (my interactions with them were not in strip clubs, so there was no potential monetary incentive for their behaviour).
Some strippers are head cases. Some are junkies. For some, it's a service industry job that pays well and allows them to have a very flexible schedule.
In our current system you cannot really say that voting for one guy means you dont want another guy. I would still like for voting for one guy to mean that you do want that guy, though. Even if he'd be your second choice, at least it is someone you would want to have the office.
Allowing people to weight each candidate and then maybe having a run-off election with the top two (assuming none of them got a clear majority) or something like that would give people the opportunity to better represent their actual feelings about the candidates in general and help remove the illusion that exists today that a vote for a candidate means the voter fully endorses that candidate and all of his policies.
Re:If you didn't vote libertarian, you ASKED FOR T
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Obama DOJ Sides With RIAA
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· Score: 5, Insightful
There will never be a point in voting Libertarian.
1) The candidate won't win. 2) You'll only peel votes from a Republican. 3) Some of them are scarier than the devils we know.
There is always a point in voting for the person you would actually like to see in office.
1) I don't vote to be on the winning team. I vote for who i want to see in the position. Independents will never be able to win if you keep voting against people instead of for people.
2) This one is ridiculous. If you are voting for the Libertarian, you clearly dont want the republican in office, so how are you peeling a vote from the republican? If i dont want any of the people running in office, i dont vote for any of them. The lesser of two evils is still fucking evil.
3) I dont vote for scary libertarians.
i do not hold a political party affiliation. I'm not advocating voting libertarian. I'm advocating voting for anyone, regardless of party, that you think would be good in the position.
I have taken a Mini apart (a couple of times actually). Opening the case can be a little tricky the first time, but it isn't that big a deal. Once the case is off, the rest is laid out nicely and comes apart very easily.
I'm certainly not a lawyer in any country and not very familiar with Australia's laws in general, but i am under the impression that third-line forcing requires the sale of a product or service to be dependent on a wholly independent product provided by a separate company.
In the Ebay case you mention, Ebay and Pay Pal provide services independently of each other and are separate corporate entities (though ebay does own pay pal) and that is why the issue of third line forcing comes up. On a cursory search, it appears that that issue hasn't been resolved. It is being investigated and no official legal conclusion has been made. If you have a site that covers the conclusion to that, i'd like to read it.
Back to the point, it seems like Apple would not be subject to that. The App store and iphone are both provided by Apple and the apps are effectively sold on consignment. Also, the apps are dependent on the iphone since they do not run on any other device. That also seems like it would be an effective defense against the third-line forcing argument.
Webkit is a fork of an existing project. Apple did NOT create webkit from scratch.
true. The original poster shouldn't be marked as a troll for saying that. This is a self-correcting issue. he is currently marked +4 insightful.
Of course, that is not a bad thing, in fact it is one of the goals of opensource that you can take existing projects and modify them for your own needs BUT it is usually considered nice if you mention this. Apple sure as hell ain't advertising it loudly and sadly a LOT of people on the net seem perfectly happy to ignore it.
You can't make a list of rules then go "oh yeah, this would be cool too, but it's optional". and then get pissed when someone adheres to all of your rules but chooses not to do the optional one. If you don't want it optional, make it part of the license. They're not assholes for not doing more than is required of them.
This argument seems a bit hypocritical coming from someone who chooses not to use the Gnu/Linux moniker in his next sentence. (yes, i'm aware linux is not a fork of a gnu kernel project. the point is that the essence of Stallman's argument for that term is the same argument being made here.)
It also shows that Apple doesn't exactly return the favor because Safari is not available for Linux. So they used opensource code but do not contribute in the full spirit of opensource.
Apple returns all of their modifications to webkit back to the open source project. They are under no requirement, morally or legally, to provide a linux safari. The essence and full spirit of open source is for the source to be available so that if someone desires to port it to linux they can do so. That spirit has been satisfied.
I had more written here but your last paragraph is so irrelevant to the subject, i decided to delete it to avoid distractions.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed?
Drivers are checked for stability, not speed. What do you expect Microsoft to do? Tell Nvidia, "Good try guys, but we want you to push for 20 more FPS on Crysis".
I guess my response to this would be :
I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
You might recognise that as it is the very next sentence after the one you quoted from my original post.
1. The lowest-end computers certified to run it were not really capable (since fixed).
Microsoft ran the certification program that certified those low end computers as being capable of running vista. This was under Microsoft's control.
2. Nvidia's drivers sucked for the first 6 months.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed? I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
3. The I/O subsystem was poorly designed (fixed in SP1), and the virtualization of video memory was a poor idea for Vista-32 that makes game memory usage balloon (hence the higher memory requirements for games under Vista, and problems running out of memory that players don't see on XP). REALITY: Vista should have pushed 64-bit as the primary OS.
clearly Microsoft's fault.
Only one of the above was really under Microsoft's control.
Two of them. Why do you think the first one is not Microsoft's fault?
I also don't agree that these are the only reasons Vista got a bad name, but I'm leaving that part alone.
Do you somehow think that buying Vista gives you a free copy of XP?
If i'm ordering a computer and request xp instead of Vista, i think i'm buying XP. I'm not buying Vista. Why am i paying for both?
However, the "downgrade" terminology that microsoft is apparently using (at least according to the article) is that the license for vista is transferred at no additional cost to cover the installation of XP. So in that case, yes, it does give me a free copy of XP if i don't want the copy of Vista. (Apparently Microsoft only allows this downgrade option from Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, so opting for a downgrade can significantly increase the cost if you have to upgrade the version of Vista so you can downgrade to XP.)
Does buying a PS3 give you a free PS2?
mine did. I have an original 60 Gig ps3. It has a complete implementation of the ps2 hardware in it.
Of course, if i just want a ps2, i can go buy a brand new one from sony without paying for a ps3. I can also go buy a used one without paying for a ps3. Why can't i do those things with XP?
Does buying the bluray of Terminator 2 give you a free copy of the original?
My copy did not. However, Artisan entertainment does not offer a licensing program that provides me with the option of converting my Terminator 2 Blu-Ray to a Terminator 1 disc for no additional charge. Microsoft does.
I can also go buy Terminator 1 without buying Terminator 2. I can even buy it used if i want to. Why can't i do those things with XP?
Re:The news item is rather subjective though.
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Ruckus Closes Down
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In what way is DRMed WMA better than DRMed AAC?
Because DRMed WMA plays on a lot of devices, DRMed AAC plays on Apples devices only afaik.
DRMed AAC plays on 70% of the devices being used by consumers, but only one manufacturer's device. DRMed WMA plays on a lot of manufacturers' devices that nobody seems to want. I'm not sure that makes it better.
Also, DRM on AAC is trivial to remove from the audio file. I understand it to be nontrivial to do so to DRMed WMA, but have no experience doing so, so that certainly could be incorrect.
Also, assuming daedae is correct in his response, it sounds like the DRMed WMA files from Ruckus won't play on any of those portable devices anyway, which suggests that this instance of DRMed WMA is much worse than DRMed AAC.
In my opinion, though, DRMed WMA and DRMed AAC both suck. Fortunately iTunes and Amazon are both now providing unDRMed music, and that, to my mind, is real choice.
this actually explains duplicate posts pretty well... The time lords, for a joke, take stories from slashdot, go back a day or two, and submit them. They get posted a few days early, but to avoid paradox, reality requires the "original" post to be made anyway. Thus we get double posts of stories.
You all owe the slashdot editors an apology.
Re:The news item is rather subjective though.
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Ruckus Closes Down
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Yeah, DRM may not be that nice, but it's there in most commercial cases and WMA isn't any worse than DRMed AAC, probably better.
In what way is DRMed WMA better than DRMed AAC?
The "omg only 3 million songs! iTunes have twice as many! Apple rule!" line doesn't help either..
I read that line completely differently. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me to compare an online music service to the 800lb. gorilla in the market.
Personally I have never heard about it before but I think it's sad one ad supported alternative dies because choice and diversity is a good thing,
I would generally agree, but in this case it seems like the market did choose. They weren't put out of business by a competitor. They were put out of business because their offering wasn't compelling. Judging from the comments on this story it sounds like their software was crap.
and some people would probably rather have ads but plenty of music than very little music because they can't afford more.
That's probably true, but these guys failed to capture that audience due to their own failures. Either that market is too small to sustain a business, or these guys just executed too poorly to be attractive to their audience. Either way, the market did exercise choice.
Whole news item summary sounds like an Apple troll.
The news item barely mentioned anything related to apple and what it did mention was an appropriate comparison of one aspect of the failed company to the leader in online music distribution. That doesn't sound like an Apple troll to me.
I was on that earnings call and heard that statement. It was in response to a question that asked specifically what Cook though about other company's products that appeared to be ripping off Apple's technology. The questioner specifically mentioned Palm.
Cook's response was simply that they like other companies competing with them because it pushes them to improve the products, but if a company is ripping them off, they'll pursue it. He also said he couldn't comment on a device that isn't even on the market yet, like Palm's new device.
The "We are ready to suit up and go against anyone" line wasn't about lawsuits. He was talking about competing in the market.
Personally, I dont think that sounds any different than any other company would say to the same question.
Apple is no more or less friendly than any other company.
Who says the climate modeling they are doing is related to global warming?
Even if it is, however, if the modeling increases our knowledge of the subject, it is not a waste of resources for scientists to seek the answers they are looking for.
Copyright has no requirement to aggressively defend it.
Trademark does, but using a trademark to identify the business that owns the trademark isn't an abuse of the trademark. It's the purpose of the trademark.
Slashdot Mirror
I have a question. Why does Slashdot constantly side with PirateBay?
Slashdot is a community made up of thousands of people. I doubt there is any subject, including whether or not slashdot sucks, that the community has a consensus on.
You are aware that they were running a major piracy ring, right?
I'm not aware of that at all. Considering they do not handle any copyrighted information and no copyrighted information flows through any servers they control, i'd say it's a pretty big stretch to say they are running a major piracy ring.
That they were providing the torrent trackers that facilitated the distribution of copyrighted materials?
They provided text files that told people where people were providing files to download. Some of those people were providing copyrighted content.
Telling someone that someone else is selling or giving away content is not illegal, at least not where i am. Nor should it be illegal in my opinion.
Don't you guys ever wonder why big-name developers like John Carmack don't post here anymore?
Because he's busy building space ships?
Have you had specific conversations with Mr. Carmack about his posting habits or are you just making shit up? My suspicion is that you are making shit up.
Slashdot has adopted a position that it is completely okay to rip people off and never pay them for their work. The site mindlessly posts two or three pro-piracy articles per day to appease the masses, who will subsequently drive up ad revenues by clicking and posting about how evil they think capitalism is.
Again, Slashdot, as a community, doesn't really have a consensus about anything, including if Microsoft is evil and if the GPL is a good thing.
Also, if the goal is to drive up page views, the best way to do that is to post articles that are at odds with the consensus as that will cause flame wars. Nothing generates page views and comments like a contrarian point of view stated as if it were a fact.
All of this is amusing considering Slashdot has threatened websites in the past for posting Slashdot's stories--due to copyright infringement.
Do you have a citation for this? I do not recall that ever happening, which is not to say it didn't, but that i don't know what you are talking about.
And Slashdotters love to make a big deal when a company "steals" GPL code. Apparently, piracy isn't theft and copyrights don't matter except when it benefits you.
In some slashdotters that apparent dichotomy does exist. I would guess it has to do with intent. People who favour the GPL see it as an important tool for protecting the freedoms of the users of software. Some of these people probably also view the behaviour of the record and movie industries as an abuse of the users of their products and consider the nullification of their copyrights as an appropriate punishment for their actions.
Of course some people also just want stuff for free.
But to try to make sweeping conclusions about the thousands of people who read slashdot based on the one or two hundred people who post on these stories is not in any way valid.
For my part, i am on the side of the pirate bay because i don't think they've done anything illegal. The police and copyright holders should be going after the people seeding the files, not the people saying "those guys are seeding files". If getting the seeders is too technically hard for them, that's too bad. They shouldn't get to go after innocent people just because it's easier.
I think that perhaps everyone has skeletons in their closet, because the perception of appropriateness in society is a fabrication of an ideal that not only doesn't exist, but that nobody really wants to exist.
The deliciousness of the skeletons in the closets of people like Mr. Yee comes from the perception that they are the instigators and promoters of the fabrication that we all quietly disagree with. The exposure of their hypocrisy is enjoyable in a very schadenfreudian way.
In my opinion, they are largely just catering to the societal fraud of morality to get elected and stay elected. In that respect the hypocrisy is ours as members of society as much is it is his for catering to it, probably moreso.
I try to avoid this by not telling other people what they can and cannot do, within the limits of causing indisputable harm to one another (and i'm fine with that if it's consentual).
It is still satisfying and entertaining to see snake oil salesmen exposed as charlatans, though.
a long, long, long brief
it takes a robust legal system to make a phrase like that make sense.
If we look at MySQL for example
MySQL would be a bad example with which to try to assert your point. MySQL AB did not lose control of MySQL because they open sourced their main product. They were a very profitable company that grew large enough to be sought after for acquisition by major international corporations because they open sourced their main product.
They lost control of it because they sold control to Sun. Sun is losing control not because people are unhappy that Sun owns MySQL now, but because Sun is not providing their customers with what they want.
Part of the problem is that MySQL is not the main product of Sun so it gets less attention and resources than its customers require.
So when it was the main product of the controlling company, it was profitable and successful. Now that it is just one element of a portfolio of products of a company, it is languishing and its customer base is talking about forking it. That doesn't support your premise at all.
Open source removes the ability for the company to use lock-in to control their customers. It forces the company to provide what their customers want and manage the perception that their involvement is valuable.
This is not intended as a flame. I just disagree with your assertion in general and your example specifically and am trying to articulate intelligently why i think you are incorrect.
Strippers or any other woman in the sex industry basically thinks men are "suckers" and "losers". All women in the sex industry are head cases. Stay away from them.
i have a very good friend who is a stripper. She is not a head case and does not think negatively about men in general. Though she does think poorly of some men, it is for reasons specific to the individuals.
Through her, i have met a few other strippers who were also charming and friendly people (my interactions with them were not in strip clubs, so there was no potential monetary incentive for their behaviour).
Some strippers are head cases. Some are junkies. For some, it's a service industry job that pays well and allows them to have a very flexible schedule.
The sun is outsourcing its sun spot activity to another star in a less economically developed solar system.
That's a fair point.
In our current system you cannot really say that voting for one guy means you dont want another guy. I would still like for voting for one guy to mean that you do want that guy, though. Even if he'd be your second choice, at least it is someone you would want to have the office.
Allowing people to weight each candidate and then maybe having a run-off election with the top two (assuming none of them got a clear majority) or something like that would give people the opportunity to better represent their actual feelings about the candidates in general and help remove the illusion that exists today that a vote for a candidate means the voter fully endorses that candidate and all of his policies.
There will never be a point in voting Libertarian.
1) The candidate won't win.
2) You'll only peel votes from a Republican.
3) Some of them are scarier than the devils we know.
There is always a point in voting for the person you would actually like to see in office.
1) I don't vote to be on the winning team. I vote for who i want to see in the position. Independents will never be able to win if you keep voting against people instead of for people.
2) This one is ridiculous. If you are voting for the Libertarian, you clearly dont want the republican in office, so how are you peeling a vote from the republican? If i dont want any of the people running in office, i dont vote for any of them. The lesser of two evils is still fucking evil.
3) I dont vote for scary libertarians.
i do not hold a political party affiliation. I'm not advocating voting libertarian. I'm advocating voting for anyone, regardless of party, that you think would be good in the position.
I have taken a Mini apart (a couple of times actually). Opening the case can be a little tricky the first time, but it isn't that big a deal. Once the case is off, the rest is laid out nicely and comes apart very easily.
I'm certainly not a lawyer in any country and not very familiar with Australia's laws in general, but i am under the impression that third-line forcing requires the sale of a product or service to be dependent on a wholly independent product provided by a separate company.
In the Ebay case you mention, Ebay and Pay Pal provide services independently of each other and are separate corporate entities (though ebay does own pay pal) and that is why the issue of third line forcing comes up. On a cursory search, it appears that that issue hasn't been resolved. It is being investigated and no official legal conclusion has been made.
If you have a site that covers the conclusion to that, i'd like to read it.
Back to the point, it seems like Apple would not be subject to that. The App store and iphone are both provided by Apple and the apps are effectively sold on consignment. Also, the apps are dependent on the iphone since they do not run on any other device. That also seems like it would be an effective defense against the third-line forcing argument.
Webkit is a fork of an existing project. Apple did NOT create webkit from scratch.
true. The original poster shouldn't be marked as a troll for saying that. This is a self-correcting issue. he is currently marked +4 insightful.
Of course, that is not a bad thing, in fact it is one of the goals of opensource that you can take existing projects and modify them for your own needs BUT it is usually considered nice if you mention this. Apple sure as hell ain't advertising it loudly and sadly a LOT of people on the net seem perfectly happy to ignore it.
You can't make a list of rules then go "oh yeah, this would be cool too, but it's optional". and then get pissed when someone adheres to all of your rules but chooses not to do the optional one. If you don't want it optional, make it part of the license. They're not assholes for not doing more than is required of them.
This argument seems a bit hypocritical coming from someone who chooses not to use the Gnu/Linux moniker in his next sentence.
(yes, i'm aware linux is not a fork of a gnu kernel project. the point is that the essence of Stallman's argument for that term is the same argument being made here.)
It also shows that Apple doesn't exactly return the favor because Safari is not available for Linux. So they used opensource code but do not contribute in the full spirit of opensource.
Apple returns all of their modifications to webkit back to the open source project. They are under no requirement, morally or legally, to provide a linux safari. The essence and full spirit of open source is for the source to be available so that if someone desires to port it to linux they can do so. That spirit has been satisfied.
I had more written here but your last paragraph is so irrelevant to the subject, i decided to delete it to avoid distractions.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed?
Drivers are checked for stability, not speed. What do you expect Microsoft to do? Tell Nvidia, "Good try guys, but we want you to push for 20 more FPS on Crysis".
I guess my response to this would be :
I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
You might recognise that as it is the very next sentence after the one you quoted from my original post.
Face it, Vista got a bad name for three reasons:
1. The lowest-end computers certified to run it were not really capable (since fixed).
Microsoft ran the certification program that certified those low end computers as being capable of running vista. This was under Microsoft's control.
2. Nvidia's drivers sucked for the first 6 months.
While Nvidia's drivers sucking is not under Microsoft's direct control, the certification program that signs the drivers for use in Vista is. Were those drivers signed?
I will agree that the signing of the drivers doesn't necessarily mean that they don't suck, just that they wont harm your system; so in that way this one really shouldn't be Microsoft's responsibility as long as the drivers weren't actually destructive.
3. The I/O subsystem was poorly designed (fixed in SP1), and the virtualization of video memory was a poor idea for Vista-32 that makes game memory usage balloon (hence the higher memory requirements for games under Vista, and problems running out of memory that players don't see on XP). REALITY: Vista should have pushed 64-bit as the primary OS.
clearly Microsoft's fault.
Only one of the above was really under Microsoft's control.
Two of them. Why do you think the first one is not Microsoft's fault?
I also don't agree that these are the only reasons Vista got a bad name, but I'm leaving that part alone.
I'm confused.
Do you somehow think that buying Vista gives you a free copy of XP?
If i'm ordering a computer and request xp instead of Vista, i think i'm buying XP. I'm not buying Vista. Why am i paying for both?
However, the "downgrade" terminology that microsoft is apparently using (at least according to the article) is that the license for vista is transferred at no additional cost to cover the installation of XP. So in that case, yes, it does give me a free copy of XP if i don't want the copy of Vista.
(Apparently Microsoft only allows this downgrade option from Vista Business or Vista Ultimate, so opting for a downgrade can significantly increase the cost if you have to upgrade the version of Vista so you can downgrade to XP.)
Does buying a PS3 give you a free PS2?
mine did. I have an original 60 Gig ps3. It has a complete implementation of the ps2 hardware in it.
Of course, if i just want a ps2, i can go buy a brand new one from sony without paying for a ps3. I can also go buy a used one without paying for a ps3. Why can't i do those things with XP?
Does buying the bluray of Terminator 2 give you a free copy of the original?
My copy did not. However, Artisan entertainment does not offer a licensing program that provides me with the option of converting my Terminator 2 Blu-Ray to a Terminator 1 disc for no additional charge. Microsoft does.
I can also go buy Terminator 1 without buying Terminator 2. I can even buy it used if i want to. Why can't i do those things with XP?
In what way is DRMed WMA better than DRMed AAC?
Because DRMed WMA plays on a lot of devices, DRMed AAC plays on Apples devices only afaik.
DRMed AAC plays on 70% of the devices being used by consumers, but only one manufacturer's device.
DRMed WMA plays on a lot of manufacturers' devices that nobody seems to want. I'm not sure that makes it better.
Also, DRM on AAC is trivial to remove from the audio file. I understand it to be nontrivial to do so to DRMed WMA, but have no experience doing so, so that certainly could be incorrect.
Also, assuming daedae is correct in his response, it sounds like the DRMed WMA files from Ruckus won't play on any of those portable devices anyway, which suggests that this instance of DRMed WMA is much worse than DRMed AAC.
In my opinion, though, DRMed WMA and DRMed AAC both suck. Fortunately iTunes and Amazon are both now providing unDRMed music, and that, to my mind, is real choice.
this actually explains duplicate posts pretty well...
The time lords, for a joke, take stories from slashdot, go back a day or two, and submit them. They get posted a few days early, but to avoid paradox, reality requires the "original" post to be made anyway. Thus we get double posts of stories.
You all owe the slashdot editors an apology.
Yeah, DRM may not be that nice, but it's there in most commercial cases and WMA isn't any worse than DRMed AAC, probably better.
In what way is DRMed WMA better than DRMed AAC?
The "omg only 3 million songs! iTunes have twice as many! Apple rule!" line doesn't help either ..
I read that line completely differently. It seemed perfectly reasonable to me to compare an online music service to the 800lb. gorilla in the market.
Personally I have never heard about it before but I think it's sad one ad supported alternative dies because choice and diversity is a good thing,
I would generally agree, but in this case it seems like the market did choose. They weren't put out of business by a competitor. They were put out of business because their offering wasn't compelling. Judging from the comments on this story it sounds like their software was crap.
and some people would probably rather have ads but plenty of music than very little music because they can't afford more.
That's probably true, but these guys failed to capture that audience due to their own failures. Either that market is too small to sustain a business, or these guys just executed too poorly to be attractive to their audience. Either way, the market did exercise choice.
Whole news item summary sounds like an Apple troll.
The news item barely mentioned anything related to apple and what it did mention was an appropriate comparison of one aspect of the failed company to the leader in online music distribution. That doesn't sound like an Apple troll to me.
None of the items it found were me.
I was on that earnings call and heard that statement. It was in response to a question that asked specifically what Cook though about other company's products that appeared to be ripping off Apple's technology. The questioner specifically mentioned Palm.
Cook's response was simply that they like other companies competing with them because it pushes them to improve the products, but if a company is ripping them off, they'll pursue it. He also said he couldn't comment on a device that isn't even on the market yet, like Palm's new device.
The "We are ready to suit up and go against anyone" line wasn't about lawsuits. He was talking about competing in the market.
Personally, I dont think that sounds any different than any other company would say to the same question.
Apple is no more or less friendly than any other company.
Officer Binks was present in the courtroom. I assure you, he's real.
Who says the climate modeling they are doing is related to global warming?
Even if it is, however, if the modeling increases our knowledge of the subject, it is not a waste of resources for scientists to seek the answers they are looking for.
that doesn't mean the government has mind control devices. It just means that FBI agent recently watched Real Genius.
please reassure your wife that i am well aware that i am a horrible person.
Don't worry. If she hasn't gotten the big bang by the time she graduates high school, she'll almost certainly get it in college.
Copyright has no requirement to aggressively defend it.
Trademark does, but using a trademark to identify the business that owns the trademark isn't an abuse of the trademark. It's the purpose of the trademark.